better known for. Christina Applegate has said that she didn't consider Kelly to be necessarily unintelligent, but rather as someone with an unconventional thought process (i.e. she was capable of learning and intellectually solving problems, but she did so in a manner that deviated from the more common linear logic). Kelly's comedic function tends to include blatant displays of naivety and ignorance, with the typical response by the family of willfully allowing her to remain ignorant. Bud, in particular, likes to sow misconceptions in her mind. For example, she asks Bud to help her with her book report on Robinson Crusoe, but ends up reviewing Gilligan's Island instead. After graduating high school in 1990, she worked as a model and waitress. By the final seasons Kelly appeared to have matured into an independent woman with a more enhanced insight and street smarts. Though she often pokes fun at her younger brother Bud for being underdeveloped and socially awkward, she often schemes with him to achieve whatever goal she has currently set for herself. On at least one occasion, Kelly has also avenged Bud by humiliating a girl who humiliated him. Her favorite comic strip is Garfield. Her less-than-stellar reading skills led to many comedic situations in which she would read the Garfield comic aloud, mispronouncing lasagna as "luh-sag-nee." Tina Caspary was originally cast as Kelly, but after the original pilot was filmed, the show's producers felt that she did not quite fit the part, and so she was replaced by Applegate. Applegate wrote on Twitter that she based her character on a girl in the 1988 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. Bud Bundy Budrick Franklin "Bud" Bundy (David Faustino) is the second child, born on January 22, 1974. In the original pilot, his name was going to be Ben. In the first season, Bud is said to be in fifth grade, making him 10 or 11, but in subsequent seasons, he was aged to be within one year of Kelly, graduating high school in 1991. He was named for Budweiser beer. Upon the series premiere, Bud was generally depicted as a brat and antagonist, who especially enjoyed annoying his sister to the point of her extreme frustration. In subsequent seasons, he morphed into an unpopular, socially inept outcast, prone to self-serving schemes - many of which tended to involve attempts to impress girls. Bud